As the mobile industry continues to emerge we’re seeing more and more new companies, especially those trying to deliver some sort of content to your handset. I’m mainly referring to advertisements and special offers. Well, now sign up for FLUC and get paid to receive content that is relevant to you and your location! Just like you, I’m sitting here saying I’m going to get paid to receive ads to my phone? This is clearly not just a service for mobile phone owners but advertisers and agencies themselves.

FLUC, which is currently in beta ( as seen by the logo above) is giving users a way to monetize their phone by accepting relevant messages targeted to that user. An example, FLUC says,

Your heading down to the local mall, and you get a Fluc message. You open it and find that it gives you a free cheeseburger from a local takeaway store. Score! Plus you just earnt $0.20 credit.

So now the advertiser can draw you into their establishment and you earn money for opting to receive this communication. FLUC has taken the high road thus far in regards to number of messages allowed, capping the max to 5 a day. When signing up for an account you determine the times at which you would want to receive ads/offers and also have the ability to turn this service on or off at any time.

How much money can you make? Well, first you can’t cash out prior to earning $20, which, in all honesty I don’t see why you would do anyway. FLUC has added a social element to their service as well in that you can add people to your network to refer ads to. So build a network and your entire network will receive these alerts thus generating you more money…smells like a pyramid scheme almost. I refer you and we both make money…interesting! Now sure how I feel about this but lets look at it as an advertiser.

As an advertiser you’re now able to send messages to “thousands” (once they are all signed up) of users that are relevant to your service/location. Essentially, in the sign up process, mobile users determine what types of offers/ads they would like to receive. If your brand/service matches you can send them your marketing messages. The nice part about this is that the users control what they receive. They just don’t get spammed with non relevant non targeted offers as it’s based on location and the interests of the user.

Advertisers, hold your horses, they only let you send a message to users one time to each unique registered user. So, create multiple messages and offers and get them out there! FLUC provides tracking details on how many ads have been sent to what areas etc. Pricing for advertisers is an interesting topic as they say you can pay as much as you want but the price depends on an auction based algorithm.

Regardless, this is interesting company that appears to be going about advertising in a user friendly way. Think about it, I could be a loyal Nike user yet Adidas advertises to me over and over. Those ads will not convert me at all. So why not target ads to those that have expressed interest in your brand! It seems like a good idea for now.

What do you think? Is the payout system appear to resemble your traditional pyramid scheme? Will you sign up?

If you're new here at toonice4TV, please subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for tuning in!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 at 1:20 am and is filed under Mobile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.